A bat is a bat is a bat, even when it's a gun

Before kids got nose-deep in smartphones - and grown-ups fed on doomscrolling pap to pretend they're busy - they had imagination. They also had sporting equipment beyond phone buttons, Game Boys and joysticks. The cricket bat, noble tool of both boundary-making and genuine weapon of choice for subcontinental rioters, has long moonlighted as a semi-automatic rifle in the hands of sugar-rushed children defending the neighbourhood 'pitch' (sic), or even the living room, from invisible insurgents. But boys and girls in the stands or watching India-Pak cricket from behind screens, it's not violence, it's vintage Rambo play. Just as the tennis racquet becomes a Fender Stratocaster in the hands of a teenager who's never heard of Jimi Hendrix, the cricket bat becomes a weapon of mass pretend.

This isn't new. Archaeologists would find cave drawings of neolithic millennials wielding sticks like bazookas - if bazookas had been invented then. Transformation of sports gear into instruments of chaos is ritualistic. Hockey stick? Lightsaber. Tennis ball? Grenade. Golf club? Wand of passive-aggressive wizardry. So, when someone gasps at anyone miming a gun with a bat, chill. Let's not get our golf shoelaces in a twist. If anything, we should be grateful that people still watch boring, one-sided cricket games for these extracurricular reasons.